Hardy Farm ..... on the edge of the Township

 This is Hardy Farm at the end of Hardy Lane, and you will have to be of an age to remember it.

Hardy Farm, 1965

It has gone now, but it appears on Yate’s map of Lancashire for 1786 and may date back further into the 18th century.

In 1845 it was home to tenant farmer John Cook who farmed 29 acres of meadow, arable and pasture, included in which there was three quarters of an acre of woodland and an acre of orchard.

Four years earlier the census records that he lived here with his wife, five children and Thomas Hand.

The family were methodists and his standing in the community was such that he was a member of the Rate Payer’s Committee and in 1848 was one of the two elected Overseers for the Committee.

The farm stood on the edge of Chorlton and strictly was in the small hamlet of Hardy out by the River Mersey.

Hardy, Chorlton and bit more, 1830

This was a lonely spot which at one point in 1830 could boast five cottages as well as the farm.

But the cottages appear to have been progressively abandoned with the last residents leaving in the early 1850s.

Location; Hardy

Pictures; Hardy Farm, 1965 from the 1965 Collection, and Hennet’s map of Lancashire 1830

Just how exotic could Manchester be? ………. memories of 1971

Now you have to be of a certain age to remember the Ceylon Tea Centre, or its equally enticing rival the Danish Food Centre.

An exotic market place, 1957

Back in the early 1970s they were a revelation to me, who until then had really only known Lyons Corner Houses, Wimpey Bars, greasy cafes and the odd forays for a business meal in the Chinese and Asian restaurants around town.

The Tea Centre was a commercial showcase for Ceylon’s products, and it was there that I first discovered a salad could be more than a soft tomato, some limp lettuce and a bit of curly cucumber smothered in salad cream.

Here were rice dishes, some of which were curried and others which contained fruit, nuts and other exotic things.

I remember the one in Regent Street in London but given that I was a student in Manchester it was the one on St Peter’s Square in Elizabeth House which we went to.

Although we did also do the Danish Food Centre on Cross Street, which had opened to a blaze of publicity on November 19th, 1965.

The Guardian ran the story over a full page, reporting that “the Danish Prime Minister with his wife, the Danish actress Helle Virkner, will attend the opening of the new Danish Food Centre in Cross Street tomorrow”, attended also by “the Lady Mayoress of Manchester, who enters as the first Mancunian housewife  to do so”.*

Ceylon Tea Centre logo, date unknown

There were also a host of other invited guests including “representatives of the Danish agricultural organizations, representatives of the grocery and provision trades of Manchester and district and representatives of women’s organizations and other local associations and institutions”.

The Guardian article did the Centre proud commenting on the décor the air conditioning and reflecting that here was a “little bit of Denmark” which was an “ideal place for a coffee and Danwich – the open Danish sandwich”.

Like the Ceylon Tea Centre, it also sold “quantities of Danish foods, [which] can be bought for an office lunch or a party with a difference at home”.”

Looking back now at a city full of restaurants offering up food from around the world, these two food centres seem quite tame.

Elisabeth House, home to the Tea Centre, 1988

But at the time they were both exciting and innovative, because while you could eat at the Armenian on Fountain Street, the Bella Napoli on Kennedy Street and a host of more expensive and down market eating places, these two were open all day into the evening and were relaxed and easy going.

From memory the Ceylon Tea Centre had a self-service as well as a waitress area and each featured those classic large wall mounted photographs of tea plantations and coastal landscapes.

Together they are part of the changing food culture in a city which just a decade earlier was more likely to have offered up visits to a Wimpey Bar, The UCP outlets, or faded tea rooms which competed with coffee bars and transport cafes.

Location; the 1970s

Pictures; the market, 1957 from Looking at Other Children, 1959**Ceylon Tea Centre, logo***, and Elisabeth House, 1988,m04395, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass


*Danish Food Centre opens in Manchester Denmark comes to Cross Street, the Guardian, November 18th, 1965

**Looking at Other Children, Jean and David Gadsby, 1957

*** Vernon Corea’s visits to the Ceylon Tea Centre at 22 Lower Regent Street London, https://vernoncorea.wordpress.com/tag/ceylon-tea-centre-lower-regent-street-london/

Of bandstands, demolished churches and a closed pub, Plumstead Common in 1915

Now every good park should have a bandstand.

They were after all the centre of many parks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries which reflected both civic pride and that long history of listening to music in the open air.

I remember the one in Telegraph Hill Park which by the time I knew it had become a sad and forlorn thing.

It had long ago lost its cast iron pillars and roof and was pretty much just an abandoned lump which you past on the way through the park to school.

Now I have discovered an old post card of the bandstand and I think at some stage I will write about it.

But in the meantime I have fastened on another which stood on Plumstead Common.

It must be a full thirty years since I was last there and of course back then I wasn’t looking out for bandstands.

As I remember we called in at the pub on the edge of the Common.

All of which is a lead in to the picture which dates from around 1915, and shows the band stand, and St Margaret’s which was completed in 1859 and lasted just over a century and a bit. It closed in 1968 and was demolished in 1974.

I rather think the bandstand might also have gone and according to one of my sister the pub has also shut up shop.

Well that as they say is how things changes.

Picture; courtesy of Kristina Bedford.

Ms Bedford’s book on Woolwich Through Time is published by Amberley 

When nostalgia is nothing more complicated than a sausage sandwich …….. Bert’s café ...... 1971

Now, we all have our own cherished memories which seem with the passage of time to encapsulate a chunk of our growing up.

Whitworth Street, 1969

For me it is nothing more complicated than a sausage sandwich at Bert’s café on Whitworth Street.

We discovered the place sometime in early 1970 and it remained our collective place to go for the next two years.

Usually it meant missing a lecture at the College of Knowledge, which was just round the corner, and more often than not would be where I fell across Mike, John and Lois, who had also put Bert’s sausage sandwich above lectures in British Social History, the poems of John Donne or French grammar.

Bert's Cafe painted white, 1969

Looking back I suspect the sandwiches were not special, but after the bus ride down the Oxford Corridor from Withington having had no breakfast, and with the knowledge that someone would take the notes, we chose Bert’s over Gladstone.

To some this may seem a trivial piece of personal history, but I think not.

Back then places like Bert’s could be found all over the city centre, although usually down a side street, which you found by luck or by word of mouth.

The food was simple, cheap and catered for everyone.  And because this predated the Café Society, most dishes were a variation on egg sausage, bacon and chips. The coffee was more brown milk and everything also came with promise of baked beans.

And it was just perfect.

Bert’s consisted on one room, with perhaps half a dozen tables, and to the rear a serving hatch.

Whitworth Street, from London Road, 1969

On cold wet days in winter, the heat and smell drew you in, not that you could see anything through the windows which seemed permanently steamed up.

We always seemed to be the only ones there, but the presence of the Police Station and Fire Station across the road must have guaranteed a steady stream of customers until both closed down.

The rest of the stretch from Aytoun Street down London Road consisted of a newsagents, a barber, a warehouse and the pub on the corner.

There was of course also the Twisted Wheel, but I can’t now remember when it relocated to the warehouse, or for that matter when it became Placemate.

But I do remember Bert’s.

Location; Whitworth Street, 1969,

Picture; Whitworth Street, 1969, Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection,
https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY,

What we did in October when we were still a farming community

Cows on the meadows, 2003

An occasional series reflecting on what we did in the township when we were still a small rural community.

Now if I had been farming here in the 1850s I might well have turned to The Book of the Farm by Henry Stephens.*

It was written in 1844, and ran to countless editions. It was the manual for anyone wanting to be a farmer.

Everything is here from what crops to plant and when to how to make a well, as well as sound advice on hiring labourers, the construction of a water meadow, and the best location for the milk house and cheese room. I learned which materials were best for building a farm house and how much I could expect to pay for materials, as well as the most up to date scientific information on planting wurzels.

It was a practical book and so “the cost of digging a well in clay, eight feet in diameter and sixteen deep and building a ring three feet in diameter with dry rubble masonry is only L5 [£5] exclusive of carriage and the cost of pumps.”

He calculated that that two brood sows could produce 40 pigs between them and that retaining six for home use the remaining 34 could easily be sold at market.

So many of the smaller farmers and market gardeners in the township might well keep at least one sow and use it to supplement their income.

Nor should we forget that these animals were destined for the table and so the slaughter of pigs was best done around Martinmas in early November because “the flesh in the warm months is not sufficiently firm and is then liable to be fly born before it is cured” and doing so in early November had the added advantage that cured hams would be ready for Christmas.

But today and over the next few weeks I want to drop in to another farming book which is H Rider Haggard’s A Farmer’s Year, written in 1898 and published the following year.

Now he was farming in Norfolk a full half century later than Mr Stephens and of course Norfolk isn’t rural Chorlton or Eltham or anywhere in south east London..

Harrowing in Mustard on stubble

That said this is what he wrote for the beginning of October.

“Since harvest about 250 loads of manure have been carted from the yards direct to the various fields where they are to spread, and sundry dykes on the marshland have been drawn.  

Also a little thrashing has been done and we sold some barley at sixteen shillings and fifteen shillings according to its quality.

Today October 5th we are ploughing on the bean stubble but with the soil in its present condition it is dreadfully hard work for the horses.”


*Stephens Henry, The Book of the Farm, 1844

** Haggard, H Rider, A Farmer’s Year,  1899

Pictures; the Meadows, courtesy of David Bishop 2003, and Harrowing in Mustard on stubble from A Farmer’s Year, 1899

Beresford Square circa 1900

Beresford Square is one of those places I remember with fondness.

And it is a place I keep coming back to, so here is another of the place, in its heyday sometime at the beginning of the 20th century.

In a previous story I traced the firm of J.F.Endean & Sons so today I shall just leave you with the image.

Picture; Beresford Square, courtesy of Kristina Bedford

*Woolwich Through Time, Kristina Bedford, 2014, Amberley Publishing,

Gilgamesh .... Enkidu ... a story over 4,700 years old .... on the wireless today

The Epic of Gilgamesh caught my imagination decades ago but I was too lazy to read the story for myself, and instead just relied on what I was told.

Hero mastering a lion.  713–706 BCE 

And what a story it is.  

According to my Wikipedia it originates in ancient Mesopotamia and is the world's oldest surviving example of narrative literature.*

It features a not very nice chap called Gilgamesh who rules the Kingdom of Uruk and behaves thoroughly badly, so the Gods create Enkidu who is a wild man and very strong who fights Gilgamesh. 

But the two become pals and go off on a series of adventures defeating Humbaba, guardian of the Cedar Forest, and the Bull of Heaven. 

Killing the Bull of Heaven does upset one of the Gods and in turn the gods decide to kill Enkidu. 

Gilgamesh is distraught and then carries on with more adventures in pursuit of the secret of eternal life, which he finds and then losses.

And just to add something more on his journey to find that secret of eternal life he happens on Utnapishtim who with his wife is the sole survivor of a Flood caused by one of the Gods which predates Noah's Flood.

So that is it in two hundred and fifteen words the Epic of Gilgamesh missing out heaps of people and some very nasty bits.

But alternatively you can listen to "the BBC dramatisation of UK Poet Laureate Simon Armitage's new verse translation capturing the timeless and immersive power of the world's oldest poem The Epic of Gilgamesh".**

I did and it was excellent and well worth tuning into Radio 4 using the link and follow Enkidu, and Gilgamesh culminating with his single quest for immortality that leads him to the very edge of the world

"NARRATOR ..... Paterson Joseph

GILGAMESH ..... Sacha Dhawan

ENKIDU/ HE-SCORPION ...... Ciarán Owens

SHAMHAT/ISHTAR ..... Leila Farzad

HUMBABA/UR_SHANABI/HUNTER ..... Kadiff Kirwan

UTA-NAPISTI/HUNTER'S FATHER ..... Raad Rawi

NINSUN / WIFE OF UTA-NAPISHTI ..... Souad Faress

SHIDURI/TOWNSWOMAN ..... Debbie Korley

Terracotta wall panel depicting Enkidu, Circa 1763 BCE

A new verse translation by Simon Armitage.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh

Director: Nadia Molinari

Composer: Erland Cooper

Sound Designer: Sharon Hughes

Production Co-ordinator: Pippa Day

Technical Producers: Keith Graham, Sam Dickinson.

A BBC Studios Production for BBC Radio 4

Programme Website"

Pictures; Hero mastering a lion. Relief from the façade of the throne room, Palace of Sargon II at Khorsabad (Dur Sharrukin), 713–706 BCE, Louvre Museum, Source/Photographer Jastrow (2006) "I, the copyright holder of this work, release this work into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In some countries this may not be legally possible; if so:I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law" and a Terracotta wall panel depicting Enkidu, Department of Oriental Antiquities, Richelieu, ground floor, room 4, Source/Photographer Author Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg)"I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license:w:en:Creative Commons attribution share alike This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.You are free:to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work to remix – to adapt the work

*Epic of Gilgamesh, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh

*Gilgamesh, BBC Rhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgameshadio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0032h64